1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to the presentation of data elements on a display, and more particularly to a method of enhancing the presentation of data elements during scrolling and other operations.
2. Background Art
Portable electronic devices, such as mobile telephones, media devices, gaming devices, and personal digital assistants, are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Such mobile communication devices are becoming, more and more, an integral part of the business and personal lives of their users. Advances in memory capacity have led to mobile communication devices that can store hundreds of thousands of data elements. By way of example, some portable electronic devices like phones and multimedia players are capable of storing hundreds of music and video files. Similarly, the contents of an entire business card file can easily be stored as an address book list in many mobile telephones. These address book lists are capable of easily storing hundreds or even thousands of entries.
One problem associated with all of this data involves manipulating the presentation of data as a list on the display. Many portable electronic devices today are small, handheld units. As such, the space on the device for displays is limited. While a particular device may be capable of storing thousands of addresses, it may be capable of presenting only ten to fifteen on the display at any one given time. While users are often permitted to scroll through the list, when there are hundreds of entries, it can be difficult to know where within a list the user is at any given time.
It would be beneficial to have an improved method and apparatus that enables enhanced scrolling or other manipulation of the presentation of data in an electronic device.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.